...to see vulnerable young people in Brazil restored to new lives of hope, creativity and purpose

Sunday, 28 April 2013

Here's to them!

After a roller-coaster of a six months helping Rita set up
the Pink House project in Medina, (the last post says a bit more about what the
opening week there was like!) we’ve recently made the heart-breaking decision
not to return to Brazil with Meninadança. This is due to many factors, and it
has been the most difficult decision we’ve ever had to make.

As we know many of you will understand, we now feel a great
deal of grief and loss, which we have been processing with the kindness and
insight of friends and our extended team. Thank you so much to each and every
friend who has supported, loved, affirmed and encouraged us. This is the first
time in our lives that we’ve felt this depth of brokenness, and the support of
our wider family has been an incredible gift to us.

Probably the most excruciating factor is having had to break
our commitment that we made to the girls and community - that we would be journeying
with them for a longer period of time than we have now been able to.

However, although we have struggled immensely with these
feelings, if this is the last time we are to talk about the girls in Medina
from personal experience, we want to use it to say that far from just ‘poor victims’,
each of these girls is a bundle of resilience and strength, bursting with
personality and character, and full of seeds of potential. Sometimes in their
lives these seeds have had space to grow, and other times they have been
tragically trampled upon. And yet the seeds remain, their energy and
perseverance shines through, and they really are overcomers of more than we
could imagine.

Furthermore, we know that in all this we are not the rescuers;
that is only ever God’s work, and we can only hold His hand and go where he
leads us. This is the beginning of the next phase of that journey, and we know that it is
just the beginning for the girls in Medina, with Rita and the team doing an
amazing job of walking alongside them… So as we leave, we want to say “here’s to them”.

After the last couple of months recovering and resting, we
are now gradually starting to look at next steps. The passion in our hearts to
journey with the marginalised and exploited has only deepened through this
experience, and though we don’t feel ready to return to Brazil for a while, we
will be continuing on this journey in London… We are hopeful, peaceful, and
ultimately trusting in God to show us the way. And it means we’ll get to see
more of our friends and family which is wonderful!!